


When the Sun Through the Window Suffocates

by AMaskOnTwoFaces



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Anxiety, Depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-24
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-11-04 06:13:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10985043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AMaskOnTwoFaces/pseuds/AMaskOnTwoFaces
Summary: Steve is going to punch something.He doesn’t know how long he’s been here, trapped in a single apartment, but it can’t have been more than a week or two, and he’s already going out of his mind (already lost track of the days).He needs out.





	When the Sun Through the Window Suffocates

Steve is going to punch something.

It isn’t that he’s angry.  (Well, maybe that too, but it’s more at the situation than at any person).  He doesn’t know how long he’s been here, trapped in a single apartment, but it can’t have been more than a week or two, and he’s already going out of his mind (already lost track of the days).  He _could_ leave, it’s just that he can’t bring himself to. 

He _needs_ out.  He has no idea where he would go.  What he would do.  What he _wants_ to do.  There’s no purpose to anything.  No time crunch.  No adrenaline pumping through his veins.  No mission to complete, no problem to solve.  There’s no purpose to his life right now.

He has lists, _so many lists_.  List of things he wants to do.  Things he wants to learn.

But what’s the point?  He had an initial frenzy of learning, an initial information dump; finding out about the end of the war and the end of his friends.  How that wasn’t the end of all the wars, so many wars (but still he has no friends). 

Now there isn’t a rush, there isn’t a need to learn.  There’s no deadline, no purpose, no motivation, and he can’t, he can’t—

Some days (most days), it takes hours to get out of bed (there’s no rush—never a rush).  He cooks and eats by himself, spends another hour staring at the grain in the wood table.  Sometimes tracing designs, sometimes with a mind so blank he’s practically dead ( ~~why isn’t he?~~ )

Once he’s up he’s restless, and regardless of his plans or intentions, he finds himself pushing his body through calisthenics, trying for further and better and more until he’s shaking and his body is ready to give out and the only thing actually holding him up ~~keeping him from collapsing and sobbing his lungs out~~ is his pride. (Sometimes there’s tears that mix with sweat, that drip down his face, slow and sluggish and sticky, but they’re all the same, aren’t they?  So he wipes them off together and tries to do something else with his day.)

Often he wishes he could go run outside, but in the daylight he feels like everyone in those tall, foreign buildings is watching, staring, judging, (pitying) and he can’t take it, can’t be another dancing monkey to a script-less play.  (He debates going in the dead of night, under the privacy of darkness, but that’s when crime is higher, and he’s terrified of finding out if he still has the will to help others, or if he’s too busy running from everyone and everything that he wouldn’t be able to reach out to the person who is reaching back.)

He needs help, he knows, even just a sounding board, a _friend_ , to mull out ideas with, to get advice and an outside perspective from.  But he’s _Captain America_ , and if he can’t figure out how to live, how is anyone else supposed to?  There’s no one who he isn’t a role model for, and he can’t _dare_ think of breaking that image, it’s painful to _consider_ it.  But who else is there?

(There’s no one.)

He’s been out of his apartment three times since SHIELD shoved him here. Once for paperwork and testing, twice for groceries.  That’s it.  That’s all he’s brought himself to do.  They were all necessary activities, forcing him out, not him choosing of his own violation.  Maybe he needs to be forced, maybe he needs to feel like there’s no choice, needs to be told to do everything (maybe he needs to be in the military, fighting for something again.  ~~Maybe he shouldn’t be a leader anymore.  He’s not fit to be the Captain anymore~~ ).

Sometimes he manages to pick something from his lists, turn on the computer, enter it in the search engine.  Sometimes (rarely) he manages to read a lot on it, to fully understand this new thing.  (Often he crosses it off his list anyways to make it seem like he’s accomplished more in his day.  He’s a liar and a failure and the guilt of it all grows at the base of his throat and the top of his chest, thick and salty and cloying like he’s choking on spoiled peanut butter.)  Sometimes the lists seem too long and daunting.  Nothing is pressing but everything is important, and there’s just _too much_ , too much that he _doesn’t know_ , but he _should_.

There’s so many little things to do, but nothing to _do_.

And he can’t leave, not when there’s so much out there that he doesn’t know, but he can’t bring himself to learn it, can’t feel a sense of urgency to do what he needs to do so that he _can_ get out.

It leaves him here, pacing the floor like a caged tiger, hands endlessly running through his hair.  Breath quickening, face heating, everywhere he looks a reminder that he’s trapped, he’s trapped _himself_ , there’s no one to blame, only him, his own problems. 

He needs help.

 _He_ _needs OUT_.

…

He takes a breath.  Another.  Lets it out.

…

He reaches for the door handle.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to leave a comment or Kudos!
> 
> This is the first fan fiction I've ever posted (and the first I've ever completed) so I appreciate any feedback you might have. I have a couple others that I'm working on, but they're more plot based (and I'm finding that I suck at dialogue and writing linearly). I think that I prefer this more narrative style and will probably integrate into those other stories more.
> 
> This was definitely a case of 'write what you know', and it turned out to be rather therapeutic to myself. This is my first summer in /years/ that I have almost nothing to actually do and I'm not handling it well. However I think I'll follow Steve's example here and find a way to get myself out of the house, whether I have a plan for it or not.


End file.
